


So This is Christmas

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: All your dead unfinished selves [6]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Abuse, Childhood, Christmas, Disabled Character, Eiffel POV, Flashbacks, Found Family, Gen, Goddard Futuristics, Inner workings of Goddard Futuristics, Jacobi POV, Jewish Character, Kepler POV, LGBTQ Character, Lovelace POV, M/M, Maxwell POV, Trans Daniel Jacobi, Violence, all of them - Freeform, from all the delicious backstory, longer than it should be, vaguely horrific people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-07 15:13:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18413225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: Lovelace can't go home for Christmas because of a number of complicated less than great reasons, and she really misses it.  She thinks maybe she can bring Christmas cheer to the SI-5! Nobody else wants it.(Also this can be read as a standalone fic, just know that Eiffel and Lovelace are in the SI-5)Plus: Dating Etiquette in the Strategic Intelligence Division, Smurf blue toothpaste, Kepler's Danger Room, By Faith Alone, Fortune cookies, and Sir Thomas Hardy





	So This is Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first contribution to this universe! I know it is April but I have a job and stuff so have some Christmas/Hannukkah cheer in April (Jacobi is Jewish).
> 
> I know the tech in the flashbacks is out of place but I figure if in 2014/15 in canon they can get to deep space and have AIs, then they have the internet in the 1980s. So the tech is kinda a mix. 
> 
> Also a note, in the flashback Jacobi is still going by his deadname and doesn't yet know he is trans. This was a hard decision to make, but I figured because this is a snapshot in time of Jacobi as he was then it would make sense for it to be AS HE WAS. So he is having some gender issues, but he doesn't have it figured out yet, and is still going by she/her, dead name, etc.

December 25, 1993

Duluth, Minnesota 

Leah Jacobi, age 11

 

Leah Jacobi liked  _ Wayne's World _ . They had the original on VHS back home. She'd seen it probably a half dozen times even if she hadn't seen the original SNL skit. She wasn't allowed to stay up that late anyway.  She  _ was _ allowed to watch the movie even though it was PG-13, one of a growing catalog of movies with that rating her parents let her watch as she got older. She was 11 now.

She was reasonably excited about seeing the second  _ Wayne's World _ .  She just wished she was seeing it with other kids and not with her parents in the mostly empty Christmas Day movie theater.  She didn't know which kids she would see it with, it wasn't like she had a lot of friends, just  _ somebody _ .  It was hard to make friends.  She moved around every few years, whenever her dad was needed in another city. He was a technical sergeant and a recruiter for the Air Force. She thought that was part of it, not staying in one place for long. 

But her parents insisted that her interests scared other kids away from her.  They were right at least in that other kids didn't like the stuff she did. They didn't like fire or explosions or weapons. They didn't fill their notebook margins with meticulously drawn guns.  They didn't know the names of 67 different artillery weapons throughout history. They didn't start fires. They didn't try to track down explosions. They didn't want things to blow up. They go to the library to look up images and videos of war and nuclear tests in secret.  She actually had to switch libraries because the automated librarian compiled a list of her searches and put her on a watch list that the human librarian told her about. Now she went to a smaller library where there wasn't a cyber snitch. 

She couldn't help it, she loved fire and explosions. Destruction.  It was something she was discovering more and more as time went on. She didn't – she couldn't – understand why other people didn't.   Fire was beautiful and explosions were amazing and they both made her feel full and happy. Warm inside and out. They were exciting. They could get rid of the things she hated. They helped her forget what was upsetting her. Freed her from the rest of the world.  She had been lectured to at least a dozen times over the past year about it. Every time the punishments got more serious, but she learned to be more careful. 

Her affection and interest began in earnest late last year, 1992, when she saw some teenage boys in the park with a haul of fireworks and on a whim decided she wanted some.  So she threatened to tell on the teens if they didn't give her a couple of rockets. At first they told her to buzz off but when she took a deep breath and got ready to yell they hastily shoved three fireworks into her arms.  She thanked them and left. 

That was shortly after her birthday.  Her parents took her out to dinner for it and on seeing the bowl of matchbooks on the hostess’s podium she decided to take some when no one was paying attention.  She wasn't sure why, she just wanted them, she wanted to use them. She grabbed two fistfuls and shoved them into her pockets, just managing to get them hidden before her dad looked her way.

Between the two events, when she was alone, she had set some things on fire. She figured out how to make the smoke and smell disburse after she was caught and punished the first few times. Her parents couldn't figure out where she was getting her matches from; she was already good at hiding things from them.  Her early experiments were vaguely scientific but the questions were always the same: 1) Will It Burn? 2) If Not, What Will Make It Burn? Then she would just watch, transfixed. But then these boys gave her rockets.  _ Rockets!   _ They were illegal in Minnesota but people often brought them over from Wisconsin, the state of her birth.  

She loved watching fireworks, but this was the first time she had something other than sparklers for herself.  She always liked those. She was always delighted by the explosions she saw on TV. She went to buildings she knew would be torn down, biking there every day to waiting for them to get demolished. She booed whenever the demolitions crews used wrecking balls instead of imploding the structures. 

But now she had her own fireworks. Her own explosions.  She immediately went to the field behind the school to set one off. And it was one of the greatest experiences of her life. From that point forward she knew this was what she wanted.  She wanted to be the one with the explosives. She wasn't sure what job that was, but she knew it was the one for her. One day she would be the person with the dynamite. One day. Her parents couldn't stop her forever. One day she would be an adult and they couldn't stop her from doing anything anymore. 

Heck! They could barely stop her now.  They tried to but she was getting better and better at hiding what she did. Her  _ experiments _ . She still lit things on fire and was making lists of what burned best and what exploded.  For future reference. 

She sat away from her parents in the theater, but her dad cleared his throat and gave her a look. She may have broken the rules a lot, but she also wasn't stupid.  When her parents were paying attention she didn't push her luck. That would do no good. She sat beside her parents and adjusted her glasses when they slid down her nose.   When they knew she was breaking the rules her parents were very stern in reining her in. She was no stranger to punishment and the more trouble she got in, the worse she caused, the more strict her parents and the more serious the consequences became.  And Leah's record was not spotless.

_ Far _ from it. 

She felt like she was always in trouble with someone.  She got in trouble at school. She got in trouble at home. She got in trouble with her relatives.  She got in trouble at the synagogue and the JCC. She got in trouble in town. Her parents got called all the time. Leah became very used to sitting outside of the offices of authority figures waiting for her parents to pick her up.  She picked fights with everyone, girls and boys. She got violent. And despite being better at hiding it, sometimes she got caught setting things on fire.

Most recently she was caught setting off a firework in the park near her house  (the last of her hard earned rockets from the extortion she pulled on the teenagers the year before.  She set two of the four off that first day, the other two she saved. Curiosity made her dissect one.  And she saved the last one for nearly 11 months for a special occasion. She set it off on a day she was having a particularly hard time). She accidentally set fire to a bush and fled when she was unable to put it out.  The fire department found her hiding in a nearby tree with black powder and burns on her fingers and clothes. Her mom had to stop working and cancel a conference call so she could pick Leah up at the fire station. The firemen had already given Leah a long lecture about fire safety and the dangers and illegality of fireworks.  Her mom and dad gave her one too, along with corporal punishment, and then grounded her for a month with weekly bedroom raids to make sure she wasn’t hiding anything. That month had only just ended and Leah wasn't risking their wrath again, especially not when she was already planning her next experiment. They had taken away her matches during one of the raids, but they had stopped their regular checks because she had laid low for a few weeks.  So she stole more matches from a different restaurant on her bike ride home from school.

Leah wondered if she should be embarrassed to be at the movies with her parents.  She didn't know what other kids her age did. She was never cool enough. She knew what some of the girls liked, but those things never interested her.  Even when she was little she didn't like a lot of the things girls did and were supposed to like. She never liked dolls or playing house or jewelry and makeup or princesses.  She liked boy things more. Not sports, but running and climbing, mud and dirt, guns and bombs, cops and robbers, and army men. Now that they were older, the other boys didn't want to hang out with her like they used to. 

Just  _ boys, _ not  _ other _ boys. She wasn't a boy.  That was why her male classmates didn’t let her hang out with them anymore, she thought, because she was a girl, even if she didn’t feel like one.  Sometimes she felt like she was a boy, and she had always wanted to be one, to run away and cut off her hair and just  _ be a boy. _  But Leah thought that must be what being a Tomboy was. Everybody called her that since she was little, a Tomboy.  But now boys and girls were different. They weren't friends like they used to be. Boys in one corner, girls in the other, and Leah felt like she was somewhere between them.  

Anyway, she knew she was the odd man out, but she thought that was the other kids’ fault. If it was because of the things she liked, then they were wrong.  The things she liked were cool. She was bitter. She understood she was weird, but she had no plans of changing what she did. Everyone else could change first.  She shoveled popcorn into her mouth, but carefully portioned it out to last the whole movie. 

The movie was fine. Leah thought it was funny, not as good as the first one but she didn't expect it to be. She was old enough now to know that, with the exceptions of  _ Star Trek  _ and  _ Star Wars,  _ the sequel was never as good as the original. Her mom didn't like it, but she didn't really like the original. Leah’s mom wasn't fun. Sometimes Leah's dad was, but only sometimes.  Not when he was lecturing Leah or mad at her, of course. When he was proud of her...she really liked when he was proud of her. But it was too hard to do, to make him proud, it almost never happened.  

The Jacobis left the theater for the Peking Noodle House a block and a half away.  It was a Chinese restaurant they frequented. In the summer when it wasn’t so bitterly cold it was within walking distance from their apartment, a long walk, and Leah thought they should always drive there, but technically they could walk there.  It was visited by a lot of people from their synagogue on Christmas. Just before last Christmas their rabbi had recommended it to them. As they set off Leah bundled herself up against the cold, yanking on a hat that used to have a pom-pom on top before she cut it off and pulling mittens over her scarred fingers (she’d given herself a lot of burns over the past year, but because she’d been quiet recently, there weren’t any new wounds.  She had recently stockpiled a few boxes of neon-colored Bandaids however, ready to start again.) 

The air was freezing on her bare face and she grumbled, “It's too cold!” 

“It's supposed to be cold, Leah,” her father said, “it's winter.”

“This stinks!” she muttered stuffing the lower half of her face under the collar of her coat.  Now when she breathed her glasses fogged up, which was annoying too. 

“The military doesn't like girls who complain,” he said. Leah thought that was probably true of the military, but it was definitely true of her dad.  

“I told you I don't want to be in the military,” Leah scowled. She didn't. She never had. Her dad wanted her to be in the Air Force. And when she said she didn't want to follow in his footsteps she saw the disappointment in his eyes that was always there.  “Girls can't even do the cool stuff,” she said as means of defense. 

“Girls can do plenty of cool things,” said her dad. 

“Boys get to do the better stuff,” she said. He couldn't deny that was true; girls couldn’t go into active war zones, they couldn’t fight, they couldn’t be special operatives, they just had to wait behind the scenes, and even if she was a Tomboy, nothing could change that she was a girl.  

“Women are fighting for more active roles every day. And they keep making huge strides. By the time you're 18 who knows what girls can do,” her dad answered.   

Leah didn't answer at first.  She watched her boots on the sidewalk through her foggy glasses. What she really wanted, far more than an active role, was not to be a girl.  She wanted to be a boy. Sometimes she wanted to be a boy more than anything else in the world. 

“Besides,” her father added sternly, “it’s not about ‘cool stuff,’ joining the armed forces is about tradition, legacy, and dedication to your country!”

Leah rolled her eyes, careful her father didn’t see.  She had heard this before. “Yes, dad,” she said. 

“Leah, wait a second,” said her mother, taking off her own scarf.  Leah did as she was told and looked over at her mother. “Pick your chin up,” her mother instructed her.  Leah obeyed. 

“I want to complain,” Leah grumbled as her mom wrapped the woolly white scarf around her.  

“We know,” her mom said with a sigh. “There,” she added, releasing the scarf, “warmer?” 

“I guess,” mumbled Leah.  Leah knew it was to keep her warm, but she couldn’t help but feel like this was part of her mother’s love of dressing her up, even when Leah hated it.  If it wasn’t for her mom she wouldn’t own any dresses or skirts and she would have cut off her long hair years ago. 

There weren't many people on the salt-speckled streets and only a few clusters at the Peking Noodle House. Leah recognized them as coming from her synagogue.  There weren’t a lot of Jewish people, at least not in Minnesota. They were all in New York and California and Israel. 

This was Jewish Christmas. It was better than stupid Christian Christmas.  She wasn't jealous. You got eight nights of presents for Hanukkah and Christmas trees had to be put up and Christians had to be good if they wanted to get presents. It probably wasn't as fun as it looked on TV.  Hanukkah was good, too. Hanukkah had fire. Christians thought they were so great. They weren't.

The restaurant was owned by an older Chinese couple, the Wongs.  The husband didn't speak a lot of English, but the wife's was perfect. The Jacobis met the Wongs last year on Christmas – their first in Duluth, having moved from Des Moines.  Mrs. Wong had joked about being the only place open and the Jacobis about being some of the only people looking for a place to eat. Mrs. Wong and her parents became...not friends, acquaintances.  Her mom didn’t have many friends, but they got along. They talked about cooking, children and things like that. The food was really good here so Leah didn’t mind putting up with all the talking. Last year they ended up talking for so long that the extremely full Leah fell asleep in the booth. The Jacobis ate at Peking Noodle House a lot since then.  Whenever Mrs. Wong was there when they were, she would stop by their table. 

Today Mrs. Wong smiled and waved at them when they came in before gracefully sailing across the floor to them. She was what Leah thought of when she heard the word elegant. She greeted them in her Chinese accent. She asked how Leah was doing in school. “Fine,” Leah answered briefly. 

“Getting good grades?” Mrs. Wong asked. 

“Yes,” said Leah, which was true. She always got good grades.  No one could complain about her academic performance. She was good at the school part of school and she liked it, at least she liked science and math; social studies and English were pretty boring.  

Mrs. Wong and Leah's parents caught up (as grown-ups always called it) and Leah tuned the conversation out, bored by it.  Adults never talked about anything exciting. She was looking around, worried and excited, to see if he was there. There was a guy she had a crush on, Elijah Hale.  He was in her Hebrew School class  _ and  _ went to the same school she did. She didn't know if she wanted him to be in the restaurant or not.  She didn't know what to do with the crush. She didn’t know what the next step was, and she didn't think he liked her back.  She wanted to avoid hearing him say it. Not that she knew what she would do if he  _ did _ feel the same way.  So she had decided she would just like him from far away and sometimes talk to him and sometimes run in the other direction or be mean to him until she figured it out. She breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't see the Hale family. It was easier if he wasn't there. 

Leah was getting bored and antsy. She had started wandering away until her father (without breaking conversation) glared at her over the top of his glasses. Leah stopped short, came back, and stood at attention, only her eyes roving the room.  They were finally shown to a table after what felt like a century. It was next to the huge aquarium in the middle of the room, filled with goldfish some of which had fat cheeks or buggy eyes or big lumpy heads that looked like cauliflower. They weirded Leah out and she liked looking at them.  She watched them instead of looking at the menu. She already knew she was going to order General Tso's chicken with white rice. 

When the pot full of green tea her mom ordered was placed on their table, she  poured it for the three of them, her daughter, her husband, then serving herself last.  Leah put four sugars in her little handleless china cup. She considered going for a fifth but her mother said, “Leah, that is more than enough.” And Leah sat back, pouting.  The Jacobis placed their usual orders. 

They spoke about different boring things, Leah only half paying attention.  But when discussion of New Year's came up, Leah perked from her slouch, becoming attentive.  Last year their neighbors had invited them to set off Wisconsin fireworks on the rooftop. Leah hadn't been allowed more than a sparkler but she still liked watching them. She always did.  And maybe this year she could bully her way into lighting something bigger. 

“Are we going to the Patersons’ party again?” Leah asked, maybe too excitedly. 

Her parents exchanged a look.  Leah glanced from one to the other, she had no idea what was going on between them.   It gave her a sinking feeling in her gut she could not explain. 

“They invited us!  I saw the invitation!” Leah pointed out.  It was on her mother's desk. The card, emblazoned with glitter-covered fireworks, was plainly addressed to  _ Saul, Diana, & Leah Jacobi.   _ They were invited back.  She didn’t know what the problem was.  She also didn't know why it was on her mom's desk and not hanging on the fridge the way invitations usually were. 

“You saw that, huh?” said her dad, disappointedly.  

Her parents then looked back at each other. They had a whole silent conversation with their eyes and quirks of their lips and her dad adjusting his glasses.  Leah felt increasingly worried. 

“We’re going, right?” she asked.

“Leah…” her mom said carefully, “Pumpkin...” 

“What?” Leah asked.

“You can't go this year,” her dad said bluntly. 

“What?!” Leah shouted it this time. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at her, but she didn't care.  What did they mean she couldn’t go?! Why would they do that to her?! She’d been so good!

“Shhh!” Both of her parents hissed in unison. 

“Why can't I go?! I'm not grounded anymore! They invited me!” Her voice started low but began to rise as she got more worked up. 

“Shhh!” Her father said again, “Act your age and don't throw a fit!” 

“Why can't I go?” she repeated quietly but even more bitterly. 

“We found more matches in your room!” her mother said.  

Leah stared in disbelief, she thought they stopped looking.  She had been so careful. 

“And Harry the security guard saw you burning something in the parking garage,” her dad said.  Leah’s heart sank even lower into her gut. 

“You can’t keep playing with fire!” her mom added.  

“You are not allowed to go near fireworks, matches, or anything like that,” her dad said. “We were going to talk about this back home but…” he set his brow, “things are going to change around here.  There are going to be a lot more rules and more room checks.”

“What?!” Leah shouted again, voice squeaky. She couldn't help it.  That was the worst punishment they had ever doled out. People were looking again. She didn't care. Her parents couldn't take all of those things away from her!  She loved them! It wasn’t fair! 

“Be quiet and behave!” her father snapped quietly, dangerously. Again Leah didn't care, this was too much!

“You can't do that!” she shouted. 

“We are your parents,” said her dad, “we can do whatever we want.”

“You can’t!  It isn't fair!” Leah repeated. 

“Not fair?” her mom laughed, “First of all, Leah, we don't have to be fair.  And second of all, you can’t keep doing this! You can’t keep playing with fire!”  

“You're going to hurt yourself or kill somebody!” her dad added. 

That sent a flair of anger through Leah.  Who was he to talk about that?! His job was to ask people to kill other people!  That was what he did all the time! Besides, he wanted her to do the same thing! 

“You want me to join the Air Force!” Leah snapped, “You  _ want _ me to kill people!” 

“The military is different!” her dad said.  

“How?!” Leah demanded.  

Her father didn’t seem to have an answer to that. He turned red. She felt her own cheeks flushing.

“How?!” Leah repeated more loudly.  “At least my way it wouldn't be on purpose!”

Her dad stood up, took her by the hand, and yanked her to her feet. 

“Where are you taking me?!” Leah demanded.  The restaurant was quiet around them.  Her mom looked straight ahead, trying to avoid all eye contact.  

“Diana, we’ll meet you in the car,” her dad said. Her mom nodded still without looking.  She was embarrassed. Good. 

Her dad started to pull Leah to the door.  She dragged her feet and pulled against him, trying to get free.  Her dad was tall and strong but she was, too, for her age, or at the very least she was tall.  Tall and wriggly. Good at escaping. Her dad knew that, he had seen her octopus her way out of things, and that was why his grip was iron tight.  

“Where are you taking me?!” She shouted it this time. Everyone was watching. 

_ Good!  _ thought Leah,  _ Let them! _  She was making a scene!  She was a spectacle! She was a firework!  She was an  _ explosion _ !  She got attention!  She caused destruction! Nothing could stop her!  Definitely not her dad! 

“We are not having this conversation here,” her father said in a low voice, all the quieter for how loud she got. The quieter he got, the madder he got, the more dangerous he was. But Leah was mad, too.  She could be dangerous, too!

“I'm not leaving!” said Leah, anger making her brave and stupid.  Her mom’s advice whenever Leah got into a fight with another kid was for her to pick her battles. Pick her battles. Well,  _ this _ was the battle she picked.  Her mom probably hadn't been expecting that.  

“I  _ will _ carry you,” her dad said dangerously. He could, easily.  “You’re only making this worse for yourself.”

“I don't care!” Leah snapped. He was strong, but she was wriggly. She picked her battle and she was ready for it! She needed her experiments! She needed her matches and explosions!  She found what she loved and her parents couldn’t take it away her! She was wouldn't let them! She didn't know what the outcome of the fight would be. She really didn't know how she could win this.  They  _ were _ her parents, but right now she didn't care. She would find a way!  And her cluelessness made her fight harder. “Just try it!” 

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Leah.  Everyone can see you,” her dad pointed out. 

“Everybody can see  _ us _ !” Leah corrected him with a sneer. And she immediately sat down on the floor. She crossed her arms and sat Indian style on the tile. Leah looked around the room to all the surprised faces of the diners watching her explosion. Even Mr. and Mrs. Wong, she behind the counter, he leaning out the kitchen door.  Leah smirked. Her parents were going to have to explain what happened. She bet other people, at least some people, would think this was unfair too. Maybe the Wongs. After all, Leah's research told her that fireworks and gunpowder came from China centuries ago. 

As Leah looked around her smugly, her dad grabbed her off the floor and lifted her up into his arms.  In one smooth motion he swung her over his shoulder, carrying her backward like a sailor's bag. She started to resist immediately, ready to worm her way free and jump down, but something made her stop short. Someone.

She glanced at the door when she heard its bells chime.  And she saw the Hales coming through the entrance. First Elijah's older brother, Noah. Then his mom. Then Elijah himself.  The whole group stopped to look and Elijah made a face as her dad walked by with her still hanging over his shoulder. Elijah looked both confused and amused, like he didn't know if he should laugh or not. His wide blue eyes found her narrow dark ones. She felt her heart sink again and her face heat up.  Elijah kept watching as Leah's dad carried her out, his eyes still on her as the door closed behind them to the tinkling of bells. She heard Noah say, “Isn’t that girl in your class?” And Elijah say, “Yeah. Her name is Leah Jacobi.” Then they were too far away and Leah couldn't hear what he said about her after that.  She slumped against her father's back. 

“Are you done now?” her dad asked, “Are you tired of making a fool of yourself?” 

“Yes,” she muttered staring at the sidewalk. 

Leah wished she could disappear for so many reasons. Elijah thought she was stupid, she was going to get yelled at for this at the very least and probably much worse, and her parents were going to take her explosives away from her.  She would have to try so much harder to hide them and if she was caught...she didn't want to think about it. She felt heavy. She couldn't remember ever feeling as miserable as she did in that moment. 

 

***

 

December 22, 2014 

Cape Canaveral, Florida 

Daniel Jacobi, ag e 32

 

Jacobi and Lovelace went swimming every weekday.  It was a ritual they started two years before, when Jacobi had first started his ill-fated on-again-off-again relationship with Virgil Klein. Jacobi knew Lovelace before that, but not well. She had been SI-4, part of Regiment A (the best of that Section) and was well liked by Major Kepler, but she and Jacobi weren't teammates at that point.  Back then, the SI-5 was a two-man operation. Jacobi was then, as now, very smug in regards to his position at Kepler's side, and he didn't try to get to know Lovelace before she approached him about Klein. 

Lovelace had always been very protective over her teammates, Klein being one of them. She liked to play big sister and was scoping out her subordinate's new boyfriend.  She was probably spurred on because Jacobi had a  _ reputation _ and even only knowing him in passing back then Lovelace could correctly assume it was absolutely warranted. 

One day, about a week after Klein and Jacobi officially became  _ a Thing,  _ Lovelace snuck up on Jacobi while he was working in his ballistics office. “Hey there, Mr. Jacobi,” Lovelace had said suddenly by means of introduction. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything beyond his work, the outside world tuned out by the blueprint he was pouring over on his tablet and the  _ Metallica  _ playing over the speakers built into his desk that he had personally modified to be far louder than was healthy. He jumped from the force of her voice and accidentally scribbled over his plans.  

“Gah!  What?!” he asked looking back at her.

“Do you like to swim?” she asked.  It reminded him of the sort of thing Kepler would do: surprise you, then surprise you again with a question out of nowhere.  In fact, Kepler had done exactly this to Jacobi early on in their relationship, but he asked about jogging and chess. It didn't take long for Jacobi to realize this was a power play on Kepler’s part.  He understood that, Hell, he admired it. He wondered if it was the same for Lovelace. 

“Why?” he asked, looking back at his ruined design. Thankfully he had only been working on a sketch and not a bomb. He was also glad that his drawing was on a tablet and not on paper where he’d have had to start from scratch.  Kepler may have worked on hard copies for his myriad of reasons, but Jacobi liked having the undo function. 

“I want to get to know you,” she said, peeking over his shoulder at his document. He covered it as best he could with one hand (the hand Jacobi no longer had) and scowled at her.  She smiled back. This was all very Kepler, but the smile was friendlier. “You're dating Virgil Klein, aren't you?” she asked.

“I don't know why that's your business,” said Jacobi with a sneer. 

“Klein has personally told me that you are, so you don't need to act coy,” she said.  

“Fine,” he conceded, “what’s your  _ point _ ?” 

“I like to make sure my men are safe and happy,” she said.  Her hand was on his shoulder, giving it a dangerous squeeze. He was reminded so strongly of Kepler again.  He wondered if she to it from him or if they just had that same macho aura. She spoke softly in case any of Jacobi's non-SI colleagues were nearby, those not in the seedy underbelly of Goddard.  Jacobi, Lovelace, and Klein were all in different, unrelated departments, Jacobi in ballistics, Lovelace in security, and Klein in communications. Only the super secret way cool Strategic Intelligence Division tied them together. “I want to meet up sometime.  Sometime tomorrow morning. So, do you like to swim?” 

“Yeah,” he said, “I like to swim. And I'm good at it.  Pretty damn good.” He had spent years as a teenager avoiding the water.  He liked to swim as a kid, but dysphoria kept him from bathing suits until after he started testosterone and got his top surgery.  He liked to swim again now as an adult with an "M" on his driver's license.

Lovelace had laughed at his bragging. “Alright, nerd,” she said, “meet me at the pool tomorrow at eight, and we'll see how good you are.” The pool in question was, of course, the indoor Olympic-sized swimming pool that Goddard Futuristics housed beside the giant gym, both available to all its employees.  

Obviously Lovelace was a good swimmer, far better than Jacobi was.  She was every inch an athlete and looked the part. Jacobi was not. He was only as in-shape as he was due to Kepler’s training and the nature of his job.  As an SI-5 operative, there were many times he had to run very quickly from many dangerous things. It hadn't surprised Jacobi then, and knowing her better now he knew it would have been far more shocking if he could come close beating her when they raced in the pool the next morning.  

Before they raced, shortly after they dove into the pool, Lovelace gave Jacobi a stereotypical Big Sister speech in regards to Klein: treat him right, he deserves the world, if you break his heart then I break your legs, all that junk. Although Jacobi lost every race he and Lovelace had, they had a good time one-on-one. They got along better than Jacobi had expected. He was purposefully difficult but she had broken through that.  She was fun. She was funny. Approachable, friendly. Now that he gave her a chance, he found he liked her immensely. And she seemed to like him, too, for some reason.

So the swim became tradition: first a weekly one, then slowly, over time, they added on more days.  Now it was nearly every work day. Jacobi had even started getting up early expressly for this purpose. 

He and Lovelace became very close.  She was good to talk to. There was no one else who provided her uniquely Lovelace perspective on things. Somehow she was both grounded in the real world and adjusted to their bizarre super-spy lifestyle – a perfect mix of military and civilian – not too military like Kepler nor too civilian like Eiffel and not as new to it as Maxwell, who had never actually even been affiliated with the Armed Forces. Lovelace was honest and open and human in a way the others weren't always. Candid was a good word for it. Unguarded.  He didn't think the other three were even capable of that. 

Even now, with what Jacobi hoped was the full and complete roster of the SI-5, there was one thing he could really only talk about with Lovelace, this included Maxwell who Jacobi had adored from their very first conversation and who he had grown closer to than he knew was possible.   That one subject: his romantic life. There was no one else among those he was closest to with whom he could talk about that. He sure as Hell was not going to talk to Major Kepler about the guys he dated or brought home. Not when he desperately wanted Kepler to be one of them. And Eiffel  _ was _ occasionally one of them. Besides, Eiffel was even more casual than Jacobi about dating and sex.  And Maxwell? 

Maxwell was the most aromantic and asexual being in existence, even more so than her AIs that were literally incapable of any sort of sexual contact. She didn't understand his dating life, she had no advice or similar experience to report.  She was a little grossed out by all the squishy biology in play. Not the way a homophobe or transphobe might be, but like some kind of silicon based alien. Maxwell was an excellent participant on conversations on gender things and problems.  Maxwell didn’t exactly do gender. She and Jacobi had very different opinions on certain aspects of it, but the discomfort felt in the “normal” world? Maxwell was there for that. Really, as a general rule, Maxwell had always felt the same isolation and confusion as he, not just about gender, but she had faced the same mockery from her peers and disdain from her family.  They were both too smart, too weird, too driven for the normies. She was as much a misfit as he was and they had joined together, an unstoppable team of losers who had finally won. They also had similar opinions and interests. In all honesty, his friendship with Maxwell was deeper, closer, and more important than any romantic or sexual relationship Jacobi had ever been in.  Or, he imagined, ever would be in.

So when it came to discussion of romance, Lovelace was left by process of elimination.  Besides, Lovelace was an amazing relationship counselor, even if she was often terrible at picking up women on her own, at least on purpose. It was a sight to behold.  Jacobi and Lovelace matched well together be it just talking or actually prowling for dates. 

Obviously they had conversations about other things, too.  They whined about their various bumps and bruises and told the other one to suck it up when they did the same.  (There was a little less of that after Jacobi lost his arm. Jacobi wasn’t sure if Lovelace was letting him get away with more or if they were both complaining less.)  They tried to rally each other for rough projects and preparing for hard missions. She liked a lot of the same movies he did and some of the same music, although in both fields Lovelace had diverse tastes.  She liked to gossip a lot more than she let on; not as often or as meanly as Maxwell, but enough for it to be entertaining. And Lovelace was chock full of that big sister advice that Jacobi, as an only child, never got growing up. 

There was only one substantial break in their swimming schedule. That had been the just prior summer when Jacobi lost his arm on a mission while trying to protect Maxwell. Maxwell had built him an extremely advanced cybernetic prosthesis in a few short days, Kepler had gotten her that time from Cutter who had wanted to get rid of the damaged operative immediately.   If Jacobi had been unable to perform all the tasks required of his job, both ballistics and black ops, Cutter would have had him discreetly executed – and had wanted to – when he found out what happened. Together, Maxwell and Kepler saved Jacobi's life.

And as Maxwell and Kepler saved his literal hide, Lovelace and Eiffel had kept him sane during the three days between amputation and getting his new arm.  None of them knew what was going on behind the scenes; Lovelace and Eiffel were just keeping Jacobi company while his life hung in the balance. They were all aware of the stakes and none of them knew what was going to happen or what Kepler and Maxwell were doing.  But Eiffel and Lovelace stayed by his side, making sure he was rarely alone. Lovelace went so far as to say that if Cutter sent someone to off him, she would stand in their way and go down swinging. Thankfully, that hadn't been necessary, because of Maxwell and Kepler.  Working together the SI-5 had saved Jacobi's life and his sanity. And he had never felt more loved in his life. He didn't say that out loud obviously, he had a reputation, but it was true. He hoped they knew. 

In the immediate wake of losing his arm Jacobi was stuck on dry land.  He had to get used to the new arm and the earliest versions of the prosthesis weren't even water resistant.  He presently had version 1.8, and while this one was absolutely water resistant, Jacobi hadn't tested just how resistant “resistant” was. He thought Maxwell would frown upon him just dunking his bionic arm underwater even for the sake of an experiment.

He knew Maxwell was busy but opted to passive-aggressively ask for a waterproof arm to gauge just how busy she was.  He expressed his desire to get back into the pool at their usual dinner at their usual diner. Jacobi told her he was considering putting in something to his insurance about getting one of those swimmer arms. Worst case scenario, he could shell out the cash for one.  He was bored and frustrated. It would take some time for it to go through, though. Maxwell took the bait. She had been offended, not by the fact that he was dropping hints that she should build him one, but that “you would even  _ pretend _ to get some crappy off-the-shelf plasticy garbage purposefully several years out of date and buggy as Hell when I can make you one better than anything they could even  _ dream _ of in a week!  Even as a joke, that's just stupid!” She was already sketching out some design plans on the tablet she whipped out of her bag.  

It took a little longer than the regular arm (because she had more time to build it, other work to do, and she wanted to study hydrodynamics first to do it right) but she made him a waterproof swim arm. He had thanked her the way they always did, almost like they were admitting defeat to the other.  The arm was somewhere between oar and fin, useless on land, an asset in the water. Once he got used to using it he could come close to Lovelace routinely. He actually beat her once, which had never happened before, and their ties had substantially increased. But it was easy to increase from zero. 

Jacobi and Lovelace had just finished their final race of the morning.  He awkwardly forced his goggles up onto his forehead with one hand. It was still early, well before work. Jacobi would not be up yet were it not for this pool ritual. Now they were treading water, catching their breaths, and discussing their lives. 

“So, how’d it go with Madison?” asked Jacobi, pitching questions about Lovelace's date the night before. One he had set her on.  Dating when you were part of the higher levels of Goddard, especially in the Strategic Intelligence Division and other secret departments was...hard, to say the very least.  Either you dated within Goddard – meaning you saw the other person  _ all the time,  _ which was one of the (many) things that had hurt Jacobi and Klein’s relationship – or you had to date using your fake identity, which meant you had to keep your real life completely hidden.

Outside of work people like Jacobi and Lovelace lived under created identities. In the higher ranks of Goddard, people tended to...disappear. Daniel Jacobi and Isabel Lovelace were supposedly dead and they lived under assumed identities given to them by GF, innocent masks to hide behind. Jacobi was Jason Jang, ballistics scientist and Lovelace was Greer Jemison, security officer.  Sometimes it was sticky trying to figure out when he had to use Jang and when it was fine to be Jacobi and remembering Goddard’s complicated hierarchy, but a good rule of thumb was that if a coworker knew his real name without Jacobi telling them it meant there was more to them than it seemed. They were part of the Goddard Futuristics below the surface. They probably knew that Graham Marcy, CEO, was utterly impotent, a figurehead, and the power behind the throne lay with Mr. Cutter, supposedly just the head of communications.  And if they named Jacobi without Jacobi knowing their real name, he knew they were above him. He wasn’t dumb enough to think he knew even a fraction of what went on at Goddard. 

Goddard Futuristics was a complicated institution.  It was truly a benevolent and giving force. Without GF, space travel and exploration would be light years closer to earth.  Goddard created the first sentient AIs, the first ones capable of taking the dangerous jobs from humans. They made enormous strides in robotics and cybernetic tech; he was living proof of that.  They were clean-energy pioneers some thirty or forty years ago. They were forerunners in the ballistics fields. They made the world a better place. But, naturally there was a dark side to everything.  The brighter the star, the darker the shadows. Jacobi thought the sacrifice was worth it. Maybe you had to do a lot of bad things, but at the end of the day, he was actually proud of what Goddard produced.  Not to mention his job here had saved his life. And without it he never would have met Kepler or Maxwell, the two most important people in the world to him. And he didn't have any delusions that he was a good person.

But it was killer on his dating life.  If a Goddard operative went with the former dating option (dating within GF’s ranks), there was both the infuriating fact they literally always saw their partner without a real break (there were only two people Jacobi could imagine living that scenario with and he wasn't dating either of them...contrary to popular belief) and there was the awkwardness of still seeing them all the time post-breakup.  They could go their separate ways, but there was only so separate those ways got even if they were on different campuses. Lovelace learned this the hard way when she briefly dated Rachel Young years ago, before Jacobi’s time. Not only was it awkward to date in the shadowy world of Goddard Futuristics, it was also dangerous. The breakup between Lovelace and Young had apparently been fairly catastrophic and in the aftermath there were a few attempted murders on Young's part.  Jacobi was just lucky Klein wasn't the vengeful sort. 

If a Goddard Futuristics operative went with the second dating option, their romantic relationship was based on lies from the beginning; literally the first thing they said to their new partner wasn't true. Jacobi sure as Hell wasn’t going to give his real name and he didn’t think anyone else in his position would either. Even without the extremely quick and painful discipline he would get from Goddard, there were dozens of people who could use it against him and his team, his friends.  Not to mention that his old life might come running to catch up with him, or at least what was left of it. Daniel Jacobi was better off dead. Jacobi wouldn’t risk everything for a relationship that, knowing his personal track record, would last like a week and a half. He was always going to lie to the new beau. Period. 

Jacobi and Lovelace had both gotten used to that fact, but it was still tricky logistically, especially for Lovelace when she had to try to explain why being a security officer required so much travel. Jacobi could mostly explain away absences with conferences and injuries due to occupational hazards (even though that hurt his pride; he was a better ballistics engineer than that).  Lovelace sometimes still felt guilty about all the lying she had to do, especially when she really liked the woman in question. She expressed this to Jacobi who explained that he didn't because, as he told her on more than one occasion, he was an asshole. 

Jacobi had forcibly gotten Lovelace this most recent date. The Captain had been in a dry spell, struggling to get over a breakup caused by all that mandatory secrecy.  On Friday Jacobi and Lovelace were at a bar downtown, both determined to get Lovelace over this hump. A woman had been flirting with Lovelace all night and Lovelace was, romantically speaking, being typically useless. She was a Hell of a charmer by accident, but often she stumbled over herself when she tried. Jacobi had seen both of her modes and recognizing this was the latter, he intervened.  He told the guy he had been courting with to give him a second, “I need to help my idiot friend,” and left the bar to where Lovelace and her pursuer were without another word.

“Hi,” Jacobi said stepping between the two women and offering his hand to the stranger, “My name's Jason, I'm a friend of Greer's.” 

“Uh...Madison,” said the woman. She was pretty, much shorter than Lovelace – but often her dates were – brown, with long dark hair and very bright makeup.  Madison took Jacobi's preoffered hand and shook it firmly. 

“Jaco—Jang,” Lovelace looked somewhere between annoyed and relieved as she muttered his name, switching to his fake one when she realized Madison might overhear, “I can handle this.”

“You super cannot,” he quietly assured her, “That is abundantly clear.” 

“So...uh, what's up?” Madison asked Jacobi. She clearly did not want him there either. 

“You like this chick?” he asked Lovelace in the same undertone before answering Madison at full volume, “Oh, you know, I was just checking in on ol’ Greer.” 

“Yeah,” Lovelace muttered, “do you think she likes me?” 

“Oh  _ honey _ ,” sighed Jacobi, then he turned back to Madison. “Greer would like to know if you want to go out sometime,” he said. 

Madison's hazel eyes went wide with surprise. She looked confusedly from Jacobi to Lovelace.  Lovelace gave her a hopeful smile. Jacobi kept his expression flat as usual. 

“Yeah!  I would!  I would like that a lot!” Madison said, smiling hugely, she had a nice smile. That was a theme with Lovelace's dates. They all had faces that lit up when they smiled.  A pretty smile always floored Lovelace. 

“Cool!” said Jacobi, “How’s Sunday work for you?” That would provide enough time between missions that Lovelace wouldn't be too worn out or battered.  She was in the paperwork stage of the job. Research, authorization, going through information other people had collected, things like that. Unless something came up, Lovelace would be in Canaveral until late January.   

“S-sure!” said Madison, clearly confused by the unorthodox match-making.   Or maybe  _ very _ Orthodox.  Jacobi didn’t know many Orthodox Jewish people, but the one family he did, a cousin of his father’s, had used a shadchan to find a possible husband for their daughter.  

“Sunday at...what's that Italian place you like so much, Greer?” Jacobi asked Lovelace.  

“Sempre Libera,” said Lovelace with a hint of embarrassment.  Jacobi grinned at her, trying to psychically tell her  _ yes, I am saving your bacon, you can thank me later.   _ Then he turned back to Madison.

“Cool, cool, Sempre Libera, they have crazy good calamari.  It's near Cherie Down Park, GPS'll find it. So that’s the 21st at seven.  Sound good?” 

“Sounds dynamite!” she said. 

“Dynamite, huh?” Jacobi snickered.  His reaction came from a couple of different places, for one that was something he hadn’t heard outside of 1970s TV reruns and, of course, his own personal gigantic soft spot for the explosive.

Madison looked slightly embarrassed.  

“I like it,” said Lovelace.  

“She likes it,” Jacobi said, in case Madison didn’t hear.  

“I heard. Thanks,” said Madison, smiling broadly again. 

“All right!  If you give me your phone I'll put Greer’s number in it,” Jacobi held out his hand for her mobile. 

Madison paused part way through the process, arm extended but phone still in hand, and took a moment to study Jacobi’s face.  He didn’t move and kept his expression neutral. “Okay,” she breathed as she passed it off. 

Jacobi took it and glanced at it.  She had a slightly outdated GF smartphone in a purple phone case with a cartoon dog on the back.  Jacobi deftly thumbed in Lovelace's phone number (one of them, the one registered to Greer Jemison) and labeled it “Greer J” followed by a thumbs up emoji and a winky kissy face.  Once that was done he texted Lovelace from Madison’s phone:  _ Ur welcome. _

“Nice meeting you, Madison,” he said, passing the phone back. 

“Yeah, you too,” she answered, still a little stunned. 

He gave them a little wave as he went back to his guy at the bar.  His evening had gone alright. They made out outside the bar and exchanged numbers, but Jacobi had no plans of seeing him again. Jacobi was a hard man to please. And he wasn't looking for anything serious.  He was never looking for anything serious. 

Back in the pool Lovelace smiled.  Apparently it had gone well. “Pretty well,” Lovelace confirmed. “She's a lot of fun.  She’s a veterinarian at an animal hospital downtown and she’s in a roller derby league.” They were one of the few non-military groups Jacobi knew of where the abbreviation “vet” meant “veteran” and not “veterinarian” which was why Lovelace used the full word.  It always carried that meaning for Jacobi, but his dad had been in the Air Force.

“What's her derby name?” asked Jacobi. Madison sounded like a good match, Lovelace was an animal person and was always weak for girls who played roller derby. 

“Emily Deck'ErSon,” Lovelace said. He had to admit he understood the appeal of roller derby if not all the puns.  Blood and sweat? Very hot. It was definitely when Kepler looked his best, which was amazing considering the man was always light-years away from the general population.

“Cute,” said Jacobi, only somewhat sarcastically. “And?” 

“We’re going out again,” said Lovelace. 

“Hell yeah!” said Jacobi.  “After Christmas?” he quickly clarified. He hoped they weren't spending the holiday together. That was far too serious after just one date. 

“Yeah, after Christmas,” said Lovelace.  

“Sounds like you're back in the game,” said Jacobi in a congratulatory manner. 

Lovelace didn't answer.  She had gone quiet, scowling under her swim cap. She looked like she had something on her mind so Jacobi waited for her voice it.  But she didn't. 

“Hey, Lovelace, you in there?” Jacobi asked after the quiet continued a beat longer than he was comfortable with. 

“Sorry,” she said snapping back to reality, “I was just thinking.” 

“About what?” asked Jacobi, concerned.  

“Christmas,” she said. 

Jacobi made a face.  Oh.  _ Christmas _ .  He had had enough Christmas for one lifetime.  Jacobi was Jewish and he was sick of hearing about Christmas.  It was the only thing the entire country talked about between Thanksgiving and New Year's. 

He had Jewish cred.  Religiously he was raised going to conservative synagogues every Saturday and holding Shabbat on Friday nights.  He was Bat Mitzvahed as Leah. He celebrated every holiday with his family and after he was officially an adult by the Jewish tradition, his parents still made him attend services on the High Holidays and whenever his paternal grandmother was visiting. She had a lot of feelings about the importance of Jewish education and keeping the lessons of the Torah and preserving Jewish culture and blah blah blah. 

Jacobi hadn't been to a service since he was 19, but he was still ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish on his father’s side. Nothing would or could ever change that. Judaism was his culture, his roots, his heritage.  As much part of him as the Korean origins from his mother's side. His mom converted when she married his dad, long before Jacobi himself was born. His dad was very much part of Judaism, or at least, Judaism was a big part of him.  He kept the faith and traditions alive. Much of his family had fled or survived the Holocaust, and he would be damned if they took his faith from him. “They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat,” was the thesis statement of every Jewish holiday.  Religiously Jacobi didn't think his father's faith had ever been in him, but his pride certainly was. And Jacobi would be lying if he said didn't like that Jewish spirit: they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat. That was part of the reason when picking his own name Jacobi went with Daniel: one of the great Jewish heroes in the Torah. 

Being Jewish meant Jacobi had a very particular relationship with Christmas: Christmas fucking  _ suuuuucked _ . He always knew Santa was a lie but at an early age he was sworn to secrecy about it, he wasn’t supposed to ruin it for the Christian kids, which he bitterly kept for fear of invoking his parents’ wrath.  He thought it wasn't fair that all that the Christian kids just accepted that there was this bearded weirdo who broke into their houses and left  _ them _ presents and were totally okay with the idea that the Jewish kids all got excluded.  Hanukkah was treated as an afterthought  _ at best!   _

As an adult, Jacobi felt he had all the more reason to hate it.  Everyone was  _ obsessed _ with Christmas.  It was everywhere, it was a fucking epidemic.  Christmas music in every public place. Christmas decorations. People wishing him a “Merry Christmas,” and if he ever dared to break that obnoxious bullshit tradition so he wasn't drowning in Holly Jolly for five fucking seconds, the Christians started crying about The War On Christmas. As if there hadn’t been  _ literal _ wars on Hanukkah.  Jacobi wanted  desperately to declare war on Christmas, launch a couple SSMs at it, put incendiary rounds in its skull, maybe drop Tsar Bomba on it and watch the mushroom cloud erupt from on high. 

He always made a point not to wish people a Merry Christmas. He avoided mention of any holiday at all, mostly because he couldn't be bothered to keep track of Hanukkah aside from when it popped up on his phone’s automatic calendar.  Christmas never moved so at least there was a designated chunk of the year into which the Yuletide plague was quarantined. Jacobi fucked with the believers, obviously. He had to find some happiness in the Christmas miasma. He always said “happy holidays” a little aggressively in response to “merry Christmas.”  He made a show of pretending to find his wallet when he passed Salvation Army bell ringers. He would pull it out and after a pause he would tisk and say “Nah, I'm gonna spend it on testosterone and male strippers instead.” He would smirk at them and pocket his wallet again. It wasn't exactly true. Insurance covered the hormones and he wasn’t so desperate or sad as to frequent strip clubs.  But the reactions of the bell ringers were always priceless. 

“I'm Jewish,” Jacobi told Lovelace. He didn't know if he had mentioned it before. He wasn't religious. It was his culture, sure, but he was as disconnected from his roots as all the SI-5 were. And looking at him people didn't tend to assume he was Jewish. 

“I figured,” Lovelace said flatly.

“You did?” Jacobi had had a lifetime of being told he “didn't look Jewish” because he had his mother's skin tone and monolidded eyes.  

“I grew up in Brooklyn,” she said. 

“So?” Jacobi asked confused. 

“It's Orthodox central. I knew a lot of Jacobis growing up.  Even a couple of Daniel Jacobis,” she said. Jacobi had no idea what it was like to live in a place where he was ever part of the majority. Growing up in the Midwest there were very few Jewish people or Asians let alone people who were both. Life had taken him from a series of cities in the Midwest to Pasadena, to Boston, to Dayton, to San Francisco, and now to Cape Canaveral; all were very different experiences.  There were places he felt like he belonged more, places he felt less at ease, but it wasn't until the SI-5 that it really felt...right. He still wasn’t part of a racial or ethnic majority, but in the SI-5 that didn’t matter.

Lovelace had a point, he did have a very Jewish name.  What people assumed Jacobi’s ancestry was actually depended on whether they encountered his name or his face first.  People who read his name first didn't assume he was Asian. People who saw his face first didn't assume he was Jewish.  Lovelace knew it wasn’t the name he was born with. She didn't know (and had never asked for) his dead name, but even if she did know it her statement would probably be unaltered. “Leah Jacobi” was, if anything, even more indicative. He hadn’t met many Christians named Leah.

“Oh,” Jacobi said.  The pause stretched again. “So...what's up?” He was kind of hoping to get away from the Christmas thing, but apparently it was getting to Lovelace.  Stupid Christmas. 

“Madison mentioned some stuff her family does for Christmas,” Lovelace said with a wistful sigh. “I miss home and I’m getting kinda nostalgic…like I'm someone's grandma looking at a portrait of the lover who died in the Second World War storming Normandy or something.” But she didn't brighten after that joke the way Jacobi was hoping she would. He awkwardly tread water beside her not knowing what to say. He knew why, obviously, she couldn’t go home for Christmas, she couldn’t see her family again.  And, weird as it sounded to Jacobi, some people didn’t hate their families.

“Oh,” he said finally, because he had to say something.  Then after another pause, “sorry…”

“Don't worry about it” she said with an attempt at a smile. 

“You sure?” he asked leerily.  

“Yeah,” she said.

“So you're...cool?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” she said again, then less convincingly added, “sure…”  Her face fell. She sighed again. “No. I'm sorry, Jacobi...I'm kinda…” Then she shook her head and hauled herself out of the water. Jacobi realized this was where the swim ended for the day. 

He tisked as he watched her retreating back, concerned for her, then he followed her out of the pool. The fin didn't have a good weight bearing surface and it wasn’t as flexible as a regular arm.  So it had to just lie on the tile as he pulled himself up and out of the pool one-handed. The technique took some fine tuning, but he was improving, becoming less awkward and less like a dying fish as he hauled his body out of the water.  He was more graceful after a few months of practice. He used to shamefully swim over to the ladder to climb out like a little kid, embarrassed by his awkwardness, but he had it down well enough by now. 

Lovelace was moving very slowly, which was unusual.  She was usually very quick and decisive in her actions.  She moved like she should, like someone who made choices immediately and regretted none of them, sure of herself. Her gait was confident, but not quite a pilot's strut.  She was impatient and you could tell that from how she moved. She did things. She usually jumped out of the water and jogged over to her towel so she wasn't wet and cold for more than a split second. But today she was moving slowly, clearly lost in thought. This happened to her sometimes and Jacobi didn't like it.  Emotions, especially heavy ones, were...difficult. Unwelcome. 

Jacobi padded across the tile floor, following her to the plastic chairs where he and Lovelace left their things. Lovelace snapped off her swim cap. Her bushy black hair was freed from below it, springing back to life.  She tossed the cap onto the arm of her chair and picked up her towel. She started to dry off, still looking distant. Jacobi wrapped his towel around himself like a hooded shawl to warm up. 

“What are you doing for the holidays, Jacobi?” Lovelace finally asked, “anything?” 

“My holiday is going on now,” Jacobi said, running his towel over his face.  Then thinking about it, he suddenly wasn't sure when he got that calendar push notification. “Uh, I think?” 

“Soooo nothing,” Lovelace said. 

“Well, I’m not spinning the dreidel and making my Bubbe's latkes,” said Jacobi grumpily, folding his arms. He could celebrate if he wanted to, he didn’t have his Bubbe’s recipe or a dreidel, but all the prayers had been burned into his brain like a brand, and he did own a menorah. Two, actually. One his parents gave him when he moved out, along with a seder plate and a Mezuzah that he never hung up.  He never bothered getting rid of them (the only time he used the menorah was during blackouts). He got the other in New York City entirely by accident. It was still in its box in a cabinet in his apartment. 

It was given to him in Manhattan when an extremely eager Orthodox man cornered Kepler and Jacobi during a November 2012 mission (the SI-5 was still just the two of them).  The man spoke very quickly when he asked, “Are you Jewish?” He was dressed in full regalia, black hat, payots, tzitzit peeking out at his belt. He stood beside a van converted into what could only be called a Menorah Mobile, with a huge silver menorah on the roof holding plastic light bulbs shaped like flames in the arms, four lit. 

Jacobi didn't know which of the two of them (Jacobi or Kepler) he was speaking to but answered instinctually, “Yeah, so?”  He immediately regretted it. Around them other similarly dressed Orthodox men were asking the same question of other people, not everyone, but some people.  Later Kepler explained they judged who was most likely to be Jewish and asked them. So Jacobi really didn’t know why two of them blond-haired, blue-eyed and the other Asian in appearance were asked.  

After Jacobi answered a brightly colored box was immediately thrust into his arms. Examining it Jacobi realized it contained a menorah and candles.  As Jacobi blinked down at his gift the man pulled on his sleeve, trying to yank him closer to the car. He started rattling off a long string of questions to Jacobi in rapid succession.  Where did Jacobi live? Where was his synagogue? Who was his rabbi? Did he need one? How often did he pray? Was he keeping kosher? Did he need a list of certified kosher restaurants? Did he hold shabbat?  Did he need a place to attend? 

Jacobi stared, wide eyed. “Uhhh…” 

“Just come here, let's talk about your faith,” the man said with a hard tug, “we’ll get you figured out.” 

Jacobi looked at his assailant hopelessly. What had his big stupid mouth gotten him into?  Luckily Kepler came to his rescue. 

“Maybe some other time,” said Kepler, grabbing Jacobi's other arm. “My friend and I have tickets to a show. We really have to be going.” He tugged Jacobi meaningfully and hard.  Jacobi let out a sigh of relief. 

“It'll only take a second!” the man called after them as Kepler power-walked away.  

“I doubt that!” Kepler said.

“We need to pray together!” he pleaded.

Kepler kept walking.  “Happy Hanukkah!” he said with a little wave.

When they were out of earshot, Jacobi held up the menorah, “What the Hell was that?” he asked. 

Kepler laughed at Jacobi's predicament and his shocked reaction to it. Apparently this was just a  _ thing _ this group did, tried to drag wayward Jews back into the tribe by way of their “Mitzvah Tanks” as the menorah mobile was properly called. Kepler had encountered them before on previous trips to New York but had only heard secondhand about how they sunk their claws in. This was the first time he had ever been approached.  He said it was interesting to see and that he had considered watching Jacobi attempt to explain that he set foot in a synagogue in a decade. But he was “feeling nice today.” 

That  _ had _ been a fun mission, though. They were there for an assassination, but that didn’t mean they didn't take in a few diversions.  They walked down a street some ways before Kepler pulled Jacobi to a stop in front of a theater. 

“What, is he here?” asked Jacobi looking for the target.  He wasn’t supposed to be, but anyone could break routine. 

“No, no,” said Kepler, “but I felt so bad lying to that man, I thought maybe we would...take in a show.”  He pointed up at the sign and Jacobi read the title  _ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof _ .  “Do you like Tennessee Williams, Mr. Jacobi?” 

“I...I don’t know?” Jacobi said.  “What about the mission?”

“Don’t worry, I know exactly where he is,” said Kepler. 

“You do?” Jacobi asked.

“I certainly do.”

“How?” Jacobi asked. 

“You’ll see,” Kepler said with a wink.  “But we’ve got time, might as well take in some local color!  How often are you in the Big Apple?” 

“Not often,” Jacobi admitted.  “I think once? Maybe twice? When I was at MIT.”

“So let’s go!” said Kepler, gesturing to the box office.  

Jacobi was bored of  _ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof  _ almost immediately.  After maybe a half hour in, Kepler caught his eye.  Jacobi sat up at attention, hoping Kepler hadn’t caught him slouched and texting Klein.  He must have; he raised an inquiring eyebrow and gestured to the exit with his head. Jacobi nodded emphatically. Kepler laughed quietly and they left.  

They went instead a few blocks west to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a military museum made out of an aircraft carrier moored in the Hudson.  When part of the military, she served in World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam. It was, Kepler said derisively, technically a navy museum, but they shouldn’t hold that against it.  Both Kepler and Jacobi worked for the Air Force and snickered about the other branch. But it had some great historical planes (which Kepler liked) and a fair few weapons (which Jacobi loved) as well as the ancient hulk of a space shuttle and some early deep space rockets. 

They spent far too much time there, Kepler delighted museum employees with his stories of being in the armed forces and his endless stores of knowledge.  He even brought Jacobi (who had never been charming in his life) into it, made him admirable, made him an object of attention. From there they went to dinner and then to a punk club and Jacobi still wasn't sure if that was because Kepler wanted to make Jacobi happy (he disliked the genre but knew Jacobi liked it) or because that was where the target was. It was probably the latter, all things considered. They followed the target out and back to his home. After locating the items they were assigned to salvage, Kepler killed the man quickly, and Jacobi burned the brownstone to the ground, making the whole thing look like a gas leak that ignited.  

Then they went back to their hotel room and ordered some expensive dessert and drinks.  They stayed up until nearly three in the morning, talking...there was a moment in which Jacobi looked at Kepler as he laughed at some stupid joke.  He was sitting by the window with his scotch, framed by New York City’s ever-present lights. He caught Jacobi's eye, and he was so agonizingly handsome it knocked the wind out of Jacobi.  His heart swelled in his chest. He realized all at once that he was in love. He could spend the rest of his life in this moment. Just here. With Warren Kepler. 

The mission had been fun.  And it was probably when Jacobi realized just how hopelessly in love with Kepler he was.  

“Then what  _ are _ you doing?” asked Lovelace as she wrapped herself in her towel. 

Jacobi shrugged. “I haven't done anything for Hanukkah in a decade and I'm having a traditional Jewish Christmas.  Fast Chinese food and a cheap movie.” Last year he and Maxwell had done that together. Few mentions of the holiday besides when they said their goodbyes late that night. Maxwell hugged Jacobi at the door of his apartment and told him it was the best Christmas she had ever had. That statement struck him.  After all, she was a Pastor's daughter. Christmas  _ must _ have been a big deal during Maxwell’s childhood. Jacobi knew she disliked her family but it must have been  _ really _ bad if there weren't many fond memories about what he assumed was the most important day on the Christian calendar at least judging from all the goddamn pomp and fucking circumstance around it. And Maxwell had sounded almost tearful when she told him that.  He had hugged her all the tighter for it and they stood there a long time as if afraid to let each other go, as if he could somehow fix her old wounds. 

“Makes sense,” said Lovelace.  

“What about you?” Jacobi asked. He normally wouldn't care about anyone's holiday plans, Christmas or otherwise, but he liked Lovelace and this was clearly on her mind. He was an asshole, but not  _ necessarily _ a  _ total _ asshole. There were people he cared about and Lovelace was one of them.

“This year?” she asked. 

“No, in 2054,” he said sarcastically. 

“Can’t help you with 2054, but this year I’m not doing much either,” she said, “nothing much at all.”   She paused for a moment and then said, “You know, my parents go all out for Christmas. Balls to the wall.  They have these big parties at the house.” 

“Yeah?  Like Cutter?” asked Jacobi raising his eyebrows. 

“Not so...terrifying,” Lovelace said, “They were  _ fun _ , you know?” 

“Not really,” Jacobi said, “Jewish, remember?” 

“Where’d you grow up again?” she asked. “You moved around a lot right?”

“Yeah, but we stayed in the Midwest,” Jacobi said. 

“Then you must have had Christian friends growing up,” Lovelace pointed out.  

Jacobi sighed and shrugged, “I wasn't super popular as a kid.”

“Sorry,” said Lovelace. 

Another shrug.  “They just couldn’t handle my sunny disposition.” 

That was long behind him now. There were things he wanted to avenge, some bullies whose houses he wanted to blow up. But overall Daniel Jacobi was miles away both physically and emotionally from where and who he was as a child.  That era of isolation was over. As a kid he had been jealous of Christmas, as an adult he was just sick of it. 

“Well, every year my parents have a big Christmas party. Everybody comes: friends, family, neighbors, people from school and work. When I was a kid I got really mad whenever one of my teachers showed up.  My parents decorate the house. We'd get a tree – we always got a real one even though it was expensive because my mom didn't like the idea of a fake one...” she trailed off. Jacobi had been nodding along, but he really had nothing to add. 

He stood with his towel wrapped around him, watching Lovelace for another couple moments. He was getting cold and wanted to change and put his real arm back on.  “Hey, so, I'm gonna go get dressed,” he said after an uncomfortable pause. He nodded his head to the door leading to the hall. 

“Sure,” Lovelace said distractedly. 

Jacobi started walking away. Then he looked back at her anxiously. Clearly this was a bigger deal than he thought. “You should get dressed before you get hypothermia,” he said gently. 

“Yeah, sure,” she repeated. 

He sighed, tried to think of something to say but couldn't think of anything comforting. He couldn’t think of anything related, either.  His family didn't have any cute traditions to share. Not really. For years his mom insisted on using the menorah he made in Hebrew School when he was 7, which was extremely poorly assembled and painted.  Also a fire hazard. They always put an orange on the seder plate, but a lot of people did that. Every year his dad got grumpy building the sukkah on Sukkot and Jacobi tried to help. There was the year his Bubbe admitted to really liking his mom's versions of her recipes, which had been really important to his parents because his paternal grandparents didn’t really approve of their son marrying a gentile and even as a kid Jacobi knew there was a lingering tension there. There were, of course, specific foods, specific clothes, little details the unique traditions that every family had, but none of it was particularly precious to Jacobi. The first thing that came to mind was when his dad told him he did a good job on his part of the sukkah.  He remembered being really proud, he’d been about 15 or 16 at the time. There were a lot of problems between his father and him then, but in that moment his father was proud of him. He still didn't share that with Lovelace. He had never shared it with anyone...anyone but Kepler and Maxwell. 

They went into their separate locker rooms, there were three on the hall: men’s, women’s, and a gender-neutral one.  Men's and women's were across from each other and Jacobi cast a last glance back at Lovelace to make sure she was all right.  But it wasn’t as if he could tell much from her back. He twisted his lip and closed the door. 

In the men's locker room Jacobi crossed to the row of lockers where his was located.  It was an average alley of red lockers with a wooden bench running down the middle. His locker was in the center of the right hand row. He took off his fin arm and laid it on the bench.  Then he opened his combination lock and pulled out his clothing, his glasses, his proper arm, his soap and shampoo, one by one, putting each item in a line beside the swim arm. He took out a pair of blue flip-flops and tossed them onto the ground.  He put the swim arm back in his locker, locked it, and spun the lock. He didn’t think anyone would rob him; no one was even there, for one, and for another, he would immediately find them and make them extremely sorry, bringing the Wrath of Kepler down upon them while he snickered at the Major's right hand.  Practically everyone who knew him knew that. He left his clothes on the bench, slung his towel over his shoulder, and held his shower accouterments to his chest with his full arm. He was getting very comfortable doing things one-armed, his stump hanging at his side, ending in the titanium peg that connected to his prosthesis.  

He tended to use this as his daily shower.  It meant less cleaning of his own shower at home.  He unceremoniously dropped his shampoo and soap onto the green tile floor of his chosen cubicle.  His arm now unburdened, he removed the towel from his shoulder and tossed it over the metal curtain rod.  He tugged the curtain closed, pulled off his trunks, and threw them over the rail as well. He turned on the water and made it agonizingly hot.  He showered, taking his time. He liked long showers and Lovelace was used to waiting for him. Eventually he turned the water off, yanked down his towel, dried quickly, and wrapped it around his waist.  He pulled open the curtain and did a cursory glance around to make sure he was still alone before leaving the cubicle. He was. He almost always was this early. The before-work exercisers would start arriving about now, but hopefully he could time it so their paths crossed minimally.  In the locker room he would rather be alone. He didn’t like getting stared at, which he always did, particularly by those in the legit part of the company. He had a lot of scars, not to mention the missing arm, not to mention the other thing. He hated it and he didn't want to give a fucking lecture every time he got dressed; he had to do that enough to explain what happened to his arm. He didn’t want to discuss the incongruous parts of his body, he didn’t even want to sneer at gawkers.  He’d rather just be normal even if his body seemed cobbled together. Sometimes he thought about bottom surgery, but that was a lot to go through for mixed results. He had had enough surgery and he didn’t want to charge into another one. Rumor had it GF's medical department was working on a new procedure. If that ended up being more worthwhile, he’d go for it then. 

He went back to his locker and dressed one-handed.  After zipping up his jeans he snapped his prosthesis onto the titanium peg sticking out of his bicep. He made sure all the external sensors were sitting correctly on his skin and flexed his fingers. They responded immediately and perfectly, the way they always did.  It was  _ his _ hand.  It was  _ his _ arm as much his as the arm he lost.  Maxwell had given it to him, made it for him, put him back together again.

He chucked his bathing suit into a plastic bag (he would dry it in the private SI-5 laundry in a bit).  He unlocked the locker and put his shower supplies back inside. He ran a wide-toothed comb through his curly hair, tossed that into the locker too, and locked it again.  Before going back into the hall to meet Lovelace he examined his reflection: the heart-shaped face, the deep, dark, narrow eyes with tired circles under them, the heavy eyebrows, gold tinted skin, the extremely curly black hair.  He was fine with the man looking back at him. He laced up his Chucks and left the locker room. When Jacobi came out, Lovelace was emerging from the women's locker room across the narrow tile walkway. The fact that she wasn’t already finished and waiting for him was evidence she was still distracted.  She usually finished in the locker room long before he did.

“Hey,” he said to her, waving to get her attention.

Lovelace looked up.  “Hey,” she repeated. 

He had to cheer her up.  He had to do  _ something _ .  What could he say?   “So...Christmas parties?” Jacobi prompted.  

“Yup,” she said.  

“What’s...what were they like?” he asked.  

Lovelace smiled fondly.  “My parents love throwing parties.  They’ll take any excuse for one. They invite  _ everyone _ . And my dad loves themes, he loves decorating, he does the whole house.  All out, eggnog, ornaments, paper snowflakes my sister and I made when we were kids, holly, wreathes, everything but mistletoe because my parents knew it was creepy,” said Lovelace.  Jacobi nodded along helpfully. She seemed to have brightened from the memory. “Everybody who comes brings food for the potluck dinner so you have a little of everything. Something from everyone and for everyone.  When I was a teenager my parents let me have champagne, which was absolutely  _ not allowed  _ any other time, especially once dad became a judge. It was...just the best.” 

She looked nostalgic and excited as they exited the building. Lovelace pulled on a sweatshirt with the Air Force logo on it.  Jacobi grew up too far north to ever think Florida was cold. This time of year there was almost always snow on the ground at his childhood domiciles.  The only time he was somewhere as warm as Cape Canaveral was when he was at CalTech for his undergrad. Florida never ducked below freezing. It was going to be 80 on Christmas verses the 20s and below he grew up with in the frozen wastes of the American Midwest.  Even the two years he spent in San Francisco had been substantially colder than Florida. That didn’t mean he didn’t complain whenever the weather dropped below 65. 

“Sounds fun,” he said offhandedly. 

“It was,” she answered. 

“Mistletoe really exists outside of movies?” Jacobi asked. 

“Yup,” Lovelace said.

“That’s definitely charming and not at all icky,” Jacobi said sarcastically.  “That’s up there with the date-rapey classic ‘Baby It's Cold Outside.’” Although Jacobi had to admit his teen self would have liked the idea of catching a crush below the mistletoe and having him realize that he had feelings for Jacobi too. But Jacobi had been an extremely embarrassing teenager.  

“Mistletoe's not that common,” Lovelace said.  She then thought for a moment and added, “maybe it is in other places but in the US I think I've only ever seen it in person once.”  She paused before continuing to describe the party, “We would sing Christmas carols and sometimes my dad brings out his guitar. He knows so many Christmas carols, one year he just got determined and learned a ton of them all at once, he still only needs sheet music for a couple.  The singing gets especially funny late in the evening when all the adults were a little tipsy.”

“Time out,” Jacobi said holding up his hands in a “T” shape. 

“What?” asked Lovelace.

“Caroling?  Honest to God Christmas caroling?” he asked.   

“Yeah!” she said, incredulous in the face of his shock. 

“Christmas music isn’t just a fun prank you play on us heathens?” 

“Not a fan?” asked Lovelace with an amused smile. 

“Oh no, they're the  _ best _ ,” said Jacobi in a drought-dry tone, “Not at all repetitive, twee, or obnoxious.  They definitely don't make me want to shove a magnesium strip into my eardrum and light it.” 

“I'm glad your feelings about them aren't dramatic and way out of proportion,” Lovelace said just as dryly. 

“Well, I am extremely even-tempered and well-mannered,” said Jacobi with a flat expression. 

“Like you say, a ray of sunshine,” she said. 

“That's what they call me,” he said. “So these Christmas carols: sung willingly or is it some form of self-flagellation or what?”  

“Sung willingly,” she said, “I like them.”

“Are you familiar with Stockholm Syndrome?” asked Jacobi. 

“It hasn't worked on you,” she pointed out.  “You still hate them.”

“I'm a filthy heathen,” Jacobi pointed out. 

“I don't think that matters,” said Lovelace. 

“It does.  I don’t think Jesus is watching me.  I’m not invited to his birthday party.  I’m immune to his charms.” 

“There are only a few carols about Jesus,” Lovelace said.  

“It’s Christmas,” said Jacobi, “It’s all Jesus in the end.  Did you go to church as a kid?” 

“Yeah, sometimes,” she said.

“They didn’t talk about Frosty up on the dais did they?” Jacobi asked.

“Christmas isn’t just about church and Jesus and Mary and all them.  It’s, you know, family, friends, remembering the less fortunate, peace and love, and goodwill towards men.” 

“Blah, blah, blah,” said Jacobi, “It’s all Jesus in the end.” 

“Great argument,” said Lovelace, rolling her eyes. 

“I know, I am a master debater,” said Jacobi, cockily buffing his nails on his t-shirt.

“Well  _ my _ favorite carols aren’t necessarily the religious ones.  I like the ones that describe Christmas time like ‘Silver Bells’ and ‘Jingle Bells’...” she chuckled, “lots of bells, I guess.  My family plays Christmas music basically all December. My sister starts it on Black Friday. And we sang them sometimes, outside the party, just when the mood struck.”

“Charming. Not in any way super obnoxious and toxically cutesy.  I bet no one wanted to drown you in eggnog,” Jacobi said.

“It was at home...mostly,” said Lovelace. 

“Uh...huh,” said Jacobi disbelievingly.  He had heard Lovelace sing to herself and along with music.  There was no way it wasn’t out loud in public at some point. 

“We had an old record player, my dad loves records, he gets everything he can on vinyl. We had a Nat King Cole Christmas album my dad was obsessed with.  It had that classic ‘Christmas Song’ recording on it. That’s another one of my favorites.” 

“Which one?” Jacobi asked without actual interest. 

“‘The Christmas Song’,” she said, as if that meant anything. 

“Deck the Halls?  Frosty? That one about the bells that everyone else likes for some reason?” he asked. 

“No, no,” said Lovelace, “and I'm pretty sure you mean 'Carol of the Bells’.”

“I'm not a terrible music scholar,” said Jacobi. 

“You'd know this one if you heard it,” she said. “‘The Christmas Song’, you know?  Nat King Cole? And Johnny Mathis does a great one too?” 

“Oh right,” said Jacobi flatly, “you saying it again definitely made me remember it. I love that song.  Oh, no, wait, wait I'm thinking of ‘Search and Destroy’.” 

Lovelace dropped her voice so she was clearly doing an imitation of someone Jacobi didn't recognize and sang with all her heart, “‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nooooose’…” 

“Oh,  _ that _ one,” Jacobi said, pinching the bridge of his nose, He'd heard that one far too often. Among the tweest of songs, sentimental to the point of stickiness.  

“I love it,” said Lovelace, “it's a classic.  It might be my  _ favorite _ -favorite.”

Another pause passed between them in which Lovelace continued to look wistful. 

“Lovelace?” Jacobi asked. 

“Hm?” 

“You got that look again,” he said. 

“The Widow-Walking-The-Cliffs-Watching-The-Horizon-After-20-Years one?” she asked. 

“That's the one,” Jacobi said. “Still thinking about the Christmas party what with the chestnuts and the open fire?” 

“Christmas Day now,” she said. She kept going without prompting.  “We opened our presents as soon as we woke up because screw waiting. When we were little I’d start opening them while my sister woke up my parents. But eventually my parents woke up extra early to catch me.  No matter how early I'd get up, they were waiting. As soon as I stopped believing in Santa I would start looking for the presents before Christmas. Like weeks before. My parents had to keep finding new hiding spots. I found them almost every year and I'd try to figure out what was in the boxes without opening them. Shake 'em, twist 'em, squeeze ‘em, I had a lot of techniques and my mom kept developing countermeasures to keep me from guessing: extra boxes, wrong-sized boxes, stuffing them with tissue paper, so I was usually still surprised on Christmas.” 

“So you’ve always been the patron saint of patience, huh?” said Jacobi. 

“Waiting is for losers,” said Lovelace.  Then in a softer tone added, “It was nice, you know?  Just me and my family?” 

“Sure,” said Jacobi dryly.  He did not know. As a kid he hated spending time with his parents. He did as an adult too.  He moved out as soon as he could. He didn't have any siblings. He wasn't close to anyone in his family. He hadn’t seen most of them in over a decade.  Spending a whole day with any of them sounded awful. 

“Well, I liked it,” Lovelace said, clearly picking up on his tone.  They were quiet for a few moments, then Lovelace spoke again. She attempted to make her tone casual and off-handed but her words very clearly had a lot more thought behind them than Lovelace wanted Jacobi to know, “Hey, I just had an idea.” 

“Yeah?” Jacobi asked, raising his eyebrows. 

“What if I had a Christmas party?” she asked. 

“Why?” Jacobi asked. “We already had Cutter's horrifically  _ merry _ party.” Cutter's parties were horrible and Kepler kept making Jacobi and Maxwell go to them.  They tried to escape twice and it hadn't worked. Eiffel managed to avoid it last year being a brand new employee but Cutter sent him an email afterward noting his absence and making a threat that caused all the blood to drain from his face as he read it.  Jacobi didn't think Eiffel would ever miss an official me GF function again.

“This would be less Hellish,” Lovelace assured him, “And 100% less chance of an awkward meeting with Klein at the punch bowl.” 

Over the years since they properly met, Jacobi went from being Klein's Boyfriend in Lovelace's eyes to being her friend in his own right. Which meant that throughout Jacobi and Klein’s turbulent relationship, Lovelace counseled both sides, putting blame where it belonged, but Jacobi's legs remained intact.  By the time The Break-Up, the last one, rolled around, she was actively advising them both to stay away from each other. Klein wanted something Jacobi wasn't going to give him. They had a lot of chemistry...it wasn't Jacobi's fault if it was sometimes explosive. 

Jacobi reddened with embarrassment, “You saw that, huh?” 

“I saw that,” she said flatly. 

It hadn't been much of a show, mostly them stuttering at each other and Jacobi trying to ignore that Klein was still extremely handsome.  But Jacobi wasn't looking for anything serious and he was never going to stop being a little too - maybe a lot too – into Kepler. At the punch bowl Jacobi and Klein managed to say a couple of perfunctory sentences to each other, turn around and walk away, dignity largely intact. 

“You could just apologize,” Lovelace pointed out for the umpteenth time since Jacobi and Klein broke up.  Lovelace still talked to Klein and the other members of her old team in the SI-4. She still spent time with them.  Although it was probably less of it than she wanted to because of the amount of time the SI-5 demanded of its members.  

Jacobi shrugged. He knew she was right, of course, just as Lovelace knew he wouldn't take her advice. In all honesty, he barely remembered what his final crime was.  It was really more than a year of being an asshole to a guy who genuinely really liked him. And who put up with him far longer than he should have. Every time they met up now was...awkward.  Awkward and  _ brief _ .  It had been a while since the Break Up and in that time Jacobi thought they had said four sentences to each other.  Whatever that final straw was it was Jacobi's fault. There had been some forgotten incident, a final blow up, but Jacobi also had a Bad Boyfriend rap sheet. Multiple counts of refusal to admit wrongdoing, one count desire to keep things casual in the face of a long term relationship, criminal arrogance and overall bad attitude. 

“Anyway, because you and Maxwell have alienated probably two thirds of our coworkers, Eiffel doesn't know how to speak human, and Major Kepler is Major Kepler, I'm thinking about keeping things small.  Maybe just us? The SI-5?” 

Jacobi had just been thinking 75% of their coworkers was probably a low estimate between Maxwell and himself.  But the whole suggestion was surprising. He looked over at her. She seemed completely serious. “Really?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Lovelace said. “Why not?  We could get together Christmas Day. None of us are doing anything, right?” 

“Probably not,” said Jacobi. They were all dead as far as everyone in their former lives knew or a fake persona as far as their neighbors did.  The SI-4 might be able to go home and see their folks but the SI-5 certainly couldn’t. Not that he or Maxwell wanted to. He didn’t know about the others.  Odds were his and Maxwell's plans were the most complicated of the group: eat Chinese food and watch _ Inherent Vice _ at the theater near Jacobi's apartment. 

Lovelace saw that he was unenthusiastic. “I could get a menorah?” she tried. 

“I'm pretty sure Hanukkah’ll be over by then. Also I don't care,” said Jacobi.  “Maxwell and me are gonna do the Chinese food and movie thing.” 

“Well, maybe after that?” Lovelace tried.  

Jacobi made a face, but Lovelace looked so hopeful he couldn't let her down. “I guess,” he said. He didn't want to do anything related to Christmas. He knew Maxwell wouldn't either. But Lovelace was his friend too, and he didn't want to hurt her feelings. But it seemed he had been too obvious. 

“That went over as well as a death sentence,” said Lovelace.  

“Sorry,” Jacobi muttered.  He was sorry, not for turning her down but because this mattered to her.  “I'm just not a Christmas guy. My Holly Jolly levels are dangerously low. I'm immune to having my heart-warmed.” 

They were coming up on the building that housed the Strategic Intelligence Division offices below it, in its secret subterranean complex.  Above ground the building served as the mainstream security offices so that SI agents and administration could blend in with the everyday Goddard employee population. Just as Cutter was supposedly just the head of communications, Kepler was thought to be just the head of GF's security. But he usually handed off those duties to the clueless second in command, Max somebody, Jacobi never bothered learning his surname.  Max Whatever The Hell thought his boss was useless and muttered darkly about Vance Brahe (Kepler's alias) under his breath, never knowing the truth about who the security head really was or what was going on beneath their feet. 

Kepler's job, like those of all SI operatives, was divided into two parts, one above board, one so below it was in the Earth's mantle.  For many of them there was some overlap, just that the bigger badder projects were not public knowledge. There was Kepler's job managing and directing the rent-a-cops in the “security” office who, as far as Jacobi was concerned, didn't actually count as security.  They were for show. Decoys. If one of Goddard's enemies or competition snatched them up they would get nothing from their victim. Kepler didn't even bother learning the names of those guards who weren’t also in the SI Division. He kept them in line, he made sure they were in shape, understood and could do their jobs, knew how to use their weapons, but that was the limit of their interactions unless there was some kind of problem.  The day to day was Max Who Cares's job. Some of the rent-a-cops were, in reality, SI agents, all miles above Max on the Goddard Futuristics food chain. Lovelace was included in that group. 

Then there was Kepler's real job: he was the head of the Strategic Intelligence Division.  The Strategic Intelligence Division was where the dirty work was done. Wet work and black ops and all that. It was one part paramilitary, one part intelligence department.  They were all Goddard’s army except the SI-5 who didn't receive a rank unless they were promoted up from a lower section. 

The system was Cutter's idea, or at the very least it wasn't Kepler's. Jacobi knew the bastardized ranks and divisions annoyed Kepler. He also knew Kepler not giving him a rank meant he, Jacobi, was more important, above it, but, occasionally, he did wish he had a title of some kind. That he could be something greater than  _ Mr. _ Jacobi.  He'd never had a rank in the Air Force or gotten his PhD.  He'd shot for a PhD at once point, after he was fired from his gig as an Air Force contractor because of... _ The Incident. _  But it hadn't worked out. 

Within the SI, troops were divided into Sections 1 through 5.  Section 1 was the lowest rung, 5 was the highest, light-years up.  The SI-3 was the largest section, and, with only five members all concentrated in Cape Canaveral, the SI-5 was the smallest.

SI-1 did the more intense security work, guarding the hidden parts of Goddard. They performed tasks as they came up, and filled the ranks when needed. They knew very little of the reality of their jobs.  They did what they were told; they were grunts. Or, as Jacobi and Maxwell often called them, “cannon fodder” or “human shields.” Jacobi and Maxwell had nicknames for every section but their own. Eiffel did, too, but his tended to be a lot kinder than Jacobi and Maxwell’s. Section 1 was “the Foot Clan” to Eiffel.  

Section 2 was the next step up. They were mostly assistants to the higher sections or filled ranks on more important or secret missions than Section 1 could handle.  They were, according to Maxwell and Jacobi, “Jeeves” or “gofers.” According to Eiffel, “Mr./Ms. Belvedere.” 

Section 3 was where they started being  _ real _ operatives in their own right, handling intelligence missions on their own and providing support at a middling level.  They were plentiful and unremarkable. “Who?” according to Jacobi and Maxwell, and “The Thunderbolts” to Eiffel (a forgotten middling superhero team, Eiffel had had to explain the reference more than once.  Apparently the biggest name associated with them was Hawkeye, so that told Jacobi all he really needed to know). 

Section 4 handled important missions, but not so important Kepler handed it off to the SI-5.  Good, but not the best.  _ Good _ enough, not  _ great _ enough.  Jacobi and Maxwell called them “losers.” Eiffel called them “Heather Dukes.”

Then there was the SI-5. 

And what could be said about them?  What words could describe their degree of...well, awesomeness?  They were  _ the _ best. The  _ top _ agents.  The crème de la crème and the crop and anything else that had cream.  Unstoppable. Dangerous. Kepler's best. They were Cutter’s greatest assets.  They handled the deepest, darkest, hardest missions. They were  _ the best _ .  Period.  End of sentence.  Kepler had selected his team from all the world: Doug Eiffel, Isabel Lovelace, Alana Maxwell, Daniel Jacobi, and Warren Kepler himself.

Rather than taking a desk job and a backseat, Kepler actually went on missions, balancing both administrative work and field work. Jacobi had been informed by Kepler’s secretary (who had worked under previous directors) that he was the only one of the SI Directors to do that and not delegate to his officers.  The only one to serve both as commander and part of the SI-5. Jacobi respected that. And he was thankful for it. 

Sections 1 through 4 were subdivided into Regiments, Battalions, Companies, and Teams, more bastardized military terms.  This adoption took anyone who actually served in or in conjunction with the military time to get used to. Except Eiffel, who never remembered the command hierarchy anyway.  He had to be reminded that this was not how the Air Force broke down despite his having once been a technical sergeant before being discharged Other Than Honorably. 

Jacobi, being in the SI, had a dual role at Goddard Futuristics as well. To the mainstream he was only a ballistics scientist, Maxwell was an AI developer, Eiffel was a communications technology engineer, Lovelace was a security officer, and Kepler was head of security. No one who wasn’t, as Kepler would say, Need-to-Know, ever suspected that Jacobi's best weapons broke pretty much every treaty imaginable and went to Goddard's secret inner workings, that Maxwell created back doors in AIs so she could easily get into them even after they were sold off, that Eiffel was cracking codes and encoding secret messages, that Lovelace was a spy, or that Kepler had an army of intelligence agents, thousands strong, all around the world at his disposal. Most people knew the four of them were Kepler’s favorites, and some knew why.  Only a select few knew the full breadth of what the SI-5 was. 

Jacobi and Maxwell did their mundane work in another building of the GF Cape Canaveral campus, the largest and most important of Goddard Futuristics locations. It was an enormous complex surrounded by trees on nearly all sides on the outskirts of Cape Canaveral proper.  It was only a couple of miles from Goddard's private launch pad and runways, so planes were constantly going overhead. And about once a day, they heard the boom of a spaceship launch. It also wasn't far from a Pulse Beacon Relay field, that was a fenced off plot of land dotted with enormous Pulse Beacon Relay dishes that received and transmitted messages from outer space in some kind of weird faster than light energy beam. Jacobi didn't understand the details and Eiffel was not good at explaining them.  On-campus was pretty much everything anyone could ask for, from top-of-the-line labs to a fully stocked Starbucks, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. That was just what the outsider could see above, not even peeking at the iceberg below.

Jacobi's lab was in building C (housing the Canaveral ballistics and AI R&D labs and offices) and was set far away from the other buildings, but ostensibly across the quad from security's building B, where security shared its space with Accounting.  Beside it was building D, which housed Special Projects. That proximity meant both Lovelace and Kepler ran into Rachel Young a lot more often than was safe, although Jacobi thought Kepler and Young would go out of their way to glare at each other like angry cats.  Building A was enormous. It housed administration, Communications, and a lobby of shops, it being the largest (above ground) building, reaching out and up. A was where Cutter, the Graham Marcy, and Eiffel worked. It also had the Starbucks and some of the other outside businesses at street level, facing outward towards the outskirts of Cape Canaveral. Other departments were in other buildings, rattling down the alphabet nearly to “Z,” every one of Goddard's branches represented there, both seemly and un.  The complex was heavily guarded, but the public could enter the parts of building A with food and retail. Special permission could get you elsewhere. Some places were off limits to anyone without the  _ correct _ Goddard Futuristics ID.  

Lovelace had no other building to report to than B.  Her office was in the primary sub-basement and her fake office was in the room right beside the door Jacobi was approaching.  This was why Jacobi was surprised Lovelace wasn't following him inside, standing back on the walkway, and watching him. He extended the ID he had on a retractable holder clipped to his belt loop and scanned it at the door.  Eunomia, one of the complex's AIs, greeted him. “Hello, Mr. Jacobi.” She knew who he really was, although Jacobi wasn't sure just how much she had access to, and knew when it was safe to use his real name. She knew the identities and whereabouts of every person on campus and must have determined at present the three of them were in no danger of being overheard by anyone who shouldn't overhear. 

“Hey, Eunomia,” Jacobi said, glancing up at her camera that had swivelled around to look at him.  The screen beside the door was blank except for the Goddard logo, during the day it would present a stream of company and breaking news stories as well as a transcript written by Eunomia when she spoke to hearing impaired employees.  Jacobi let go of his ID and it snapped back to his belt loop and yanked open the door. He glanced back at the Captain, “Lovelace, you coming?” 

She looked over at him from where she'd been staring into space.  She gave it a half second of thought. “Nah,” she said, “not today.” 

“You sure?” he asked, they rarely varied in their morning ritual. 

“Yeah.” 

If she wasn't following their usual morning routine.  If she had been the two of them would go to the SI-5 lounge (which was extremely swanky, a fact Jacobi loved to point out to the other sections of the SI) for coffee.  Even if she wasn’t she should still be coming into this building to get to one of her offices.

“Where you headed?” Jacobi asked. 

She thought silently for a moment than answered, “Not sure.  A walk I guess,” she decided. Then, with a smile that was sadder than she probably intended, she added, “along the cliffs to stare out at the horizon, hoping maybe it will be tonight.” 

“...Oh...kay,” said Jacobi. He held the door open, looking back at her, “have fun on that ol’ dusty trail, I guess?” 

“Yeah, sure…”  Lovelace said, setting off down the quad.  

“Wait, wait,” said Jacobi and Lovelace paused.  

“Mr. Jacobi, you aren't supposed to leave the door open this long,” said Eunomia. “The amount of time allowable for this time of year listed in my programing is two minutes if there is no one else coming inside.”

“Just give me one second,” he said.

“I have given you two minutes and six seconds,” said Eunomia in a scolding tone without scolding manner.  

“One  _ more! _ ” said Jacobi.  Then he added to Lovelace, “I'm sure someone'll be interested in your party.  Try Eiffel.” 

“I probably will,” said Lovelace, “I’ll see you.” 

Jacobi gave her a little wave and watched her slowly retreating back for a moment. 

“Mr. Jacobi--” said Eunomia. 

“I know, I  _ know _ ,” answered Jacobi, closing the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> This got way, way longer than I intended it to be by the way. IDK if I'm sorry or what. This is definitely not my usual rough-and-tumble adventure, but some low key character stuff.
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing flashbacks and figuring out how the behind the scenes of Goddard Futuristics worked.


End file.
